Month in numbers

2.

The number of years a car park in a big mall in Bournemouth had been open, without a certificate of completion from Building Control, when owners shut it suddenly over safety concerns on 30 November. Tensions were high in the run-up to Christmas as anchor tenants of the Castlepoint Shopping Centre had to close. The car park had shut once before after reports of falling concrete. Remedial work had been under way, supervised by contractor Kier. The council insisted a certificate is not necessary before opening but the issue became a political hot potato. Southampton University lecturer David Brown likened it to “playing with fire”, but a commercial developer told CM that, in practice, Building Control offices avoid issuing certificates of completion lest they be held accountable for defects.

20.

The position of the highest placed contractor in a list of the most admired companies. Balfour Beatty scored 63 points out of 100 in the Management Today Poll 2005. Companies were marked on different criteria that included quality of management and financial soundness. The survey that covered 22 sectors said that Balfour Beatty’s order book was bulging with £7.4bn of business and a 14% rise in half-year profits. On the downside its name is still heavily linked with the fallout from its involvement in the Hatfield rail crash, which resulted in a £10m fine for breaching health and safety regulations. Other construction companies that made the final list included Persimmon, Barratt, Taylor Woodrow, George Wimpey, Amec and Carillion. The overall winner was Tesco.

It seems that every little helps.

30.

The (pitiful) number of years before poor quality houses built in “sustainable communities” need demolishing, according the Wates Group. In a report called Failing Communities: Breaking the Cycle, the contractor warns that nobody will live in these experiments unless the quality of design and construction improves. Chief executive Paul Drechsler said the public demands good soundproofing, easy-to-maintain materials and smart positioning of fixtures, like stairwells, to allow flexibility of layouts in the future. The report says that, despite the rhetoric, most non-PFI public sector construction programmes are driven by short-term cost cutting, and that, contrary to the very concept of sustainability, future generations will pay the price for buildings that are unfit for purpose.

60.

The number of days that could be chopped off the permit process if you want to erect an eco-friendly building in the notoriously bureaucratic city of Chicago, according to American magazine Building Design & Construction. The average wait is 100 days and is often much longer, but under mayor Richard Daley’s green campaign the city has established a separate department to process applications from developers willing to meet green criteria, and the delay is expected to shrink to 40 days. There are also financial incentives for going green. In Chicago you can pay up to $50,000 (£28,360) for a compulsory independent building code consultation. Eco-friendly developers would have those fees covered by the city. Perhaps turbines could be next – it is called the Windy City.

23bn.

The amount in US dollars owed as of last year to contractors in China for projects done before 2003, according to the CIOB’s new journal International Construction Review (iCON). That’s around 8% of the gross output value of the industry for that year. Non-payment in China is rife, with clients commissioning projects without adequate funds. Often contractors are pressured to fund a job themselves on the promise of payment when the asset makes money. It’s not just unscrupulous developers, either. Almost 40% of the bad debts arise out of projects procured by local governments. As a result, desperate workers go unpaid and abandoned projects, like the hotel pictured here, loom everywhere. Contracts are growing teeth, however. Arbitration is taking off, and the state is tackling the problem.